Memories Of My Melancholy Whores - Hardcover

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0224077643 ISBN 13: 9780224077644

Publisher: Jonathan Cape, 2005

Synopsis

Memories of My Melancholy Whores is Gabriel Garcia Marquez's first work of fiction in ten years and it fully lives up to the expectations of his critics, readers, and fans of all ages and nationalities. Memories of My Melancholy Whores introduces us to a totally new genre of Garcia Marquez's writing. It is a fairy tale for the aged - a story that celebrates the belated discovery of amorous passion in old age.

This enticingly sensual yet at the same time innocent adventure tells of an unnamed second-rate reporter who on the eve of his ninetieth birthday decides to give himself 'a night of mad love with a virgin adolescent'. In a little more than 100 pages, Garcia Marquez proceeds to describe a series of encounters that is hypnotising and disturbing. When he first sees the chosen girl - a shy fourteen-year-old, whom he calls Delgadina - asleep, entirely naked, in the brothel room, his life begins to change completely. He never speaks to her nor does he learn anything about her, nor she of him. But her presence spurs the aged pensioner to recall his experiences with the other women in his life, all whores by profession, all paid to perform for him the acts of love. But now he realizes that 'sex is the consolation one has for not finding enough love'. Smitten, he screams of his love from the rooftops, which for him means writing about it in his weekly newspaper columns, and in return, he becomes the most famous man in his town.

Love has always been a major theme in Garcia Marquez's writing. It is often visualized in his fiction as a source of endurance, a bulwark against the rush of time's passage. In Love in the Time of Cholera, he celebrated a love that was almost fifty years in forming, modelling it on the courtship of his own grandparents. This last novel, written at the peak of the author's fame, is another illustration of its tranformative power. Memories of My Melancholy Whores, written in Garcia Marquez's incomparable style, movingly contemplates the misfortunes of old age and celebrates the joys of being in love.

About this title

Review:

"Magic and cynicism, love and power, corruption and redemption: these abrasive pairings are hallmarks of the magic realism that Garcia Marquez is famous for pioneering. Yet his voice is never genre-bound or predictable. There is not in this slender book one stale sentence, redundant word or unfinished thought" (Ruth Scurr The Times)

"Marquez describes this amorous, sometimes disturbing journey with the grace and vigour of a master storyteller" (Eithne Farry Daily Mail)

"[A] tender fantasy of loneliness, hope and redemption...this enchanting little book adds another layer to his unhurried fictional world" (Angel Gurria-Quintana Financial Times)

From the Publisher:

A major literary event: Gabriel Garcia Marquez's first work of fiction for ten years

About this edition

• Publisher: Jonathan Cape
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0224077643
• ISBN 13: 9780224077644
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 128